Architecture: Art and ScienceAuthor(s): Charles W. MooreSource: Journal of Architectural Education (1947-1974), Vol. 19, No. 4 (Jun., 1965), pp. 53-56Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture,Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1424258 .

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events in subsequent times. Thus, even in the second half of the twentieth century we naively act out the scenario written for our great-grandfathers. The so- called traditionalists have followed the pattern of political history. They have been concerned princi- pally with the English colonies and the dominantly northern and puritan prototypes, neglecting for seri- ous consideration the more ecologically sensitive architecture of the French and the Spanish which, as a lesson in adaptive form, has equal if not even more significance.

Political and social institutions tend to change with the times, but their architectural symbols, at least to an influential majority of citizens, remain fixed and critically out of focus. Thus, the youthful and progressive President Kennedy builds an imita- tion colonial house; and the Federal government squanders millions on a new Congressional office building in a vain attempt to justify poor planning by a senseless rejuggling of Ionic porticoes. These examples are cited as symbolic of a nationwide pub- lic attitude. Clearly, we need a new scenario-a new history of architecture which will explain the time- binding principles of form-that our historical build- ings are expressive of a very special way of life tied to its period and place in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico or California as well as New England and Virginia. The intrinsic qualities we admire stem from the uniqueness: the special flavor given by people, place and time. But this undeniable charm of original historical buildings in their settings continues to be vulgarized through mechanized parodies from one end of the country to the other.

When the schools, the architects and the profes- sional journals can straighten out this kind of per- version of history we will have the basis for a con- cept of modern architecture broad enough to encour- age an infinite variety of compatible theory. Fashions we shall continue to have, but they will be minor and interesting fluctuations of dominant architectural forms that have relevance to contemporary Ameri-

events in subsequent times. Thus, even in the second half of the twentieth century we naively act out the scenario written for our great-grandfathers. The so- called traditionalists have followed the pattern of political history. They have been concerned princi- pally with the English colonies and the dominantly northern and puritan prototypes, neglecting for seri- ous consideration the more ecologically sensitive architecture of the French and the Spanish which, as a lesson in adaptive form, has equal if not even more significance.

Political and social institutions tend to change with the times, but their architectural symbols, at least to an influential majority of citizens, remain fixed and critically out of focus. Thus, the youthful and progressive President Kennedy builds an imita- tion colonial house; and the Federal government squanders millions on a new Congressional office building in a vain attempt to justify poor planning by a senseless rejuggling of Ionic porticoes. These examples are cited as symbolic of a nationwide pub- lic attitude. Clearly, we need a new scenario-a new history of architecture which will explain the time- binding principles of form-that our historical build- ings are expressive of a very special way of life tied to its period and place in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico or California as well as New England and Virginia. The intrinsic qualities we admire stem from the uniqueness: the special flavor given by people, place and time. But this undeniable charm of original historical buildings in their settings continues to be vulgarized through mechanized parodies from one end of the country to the other.

When the schools, the architects and the profes- sional journals can straighten out this kind of per- version of history we will have the basis for a con- cept of modern architecture broad enough to encour- age an infinite variety of compatible theory. Fashions we shall continue to have, but they will be minor and interesting fluctuations of dominant architectural forms that have relevance to contemporary Ameri-

can society no longer afraid or ashamed of what Benjamin Polk has called "the rootedness of spirit."

The Present Need

Our recognition of the acceleration of technologi- cal and social change suggests that we in the schools of architecture place a new and somewhat different kind of emphasis upon historical studies-especially in America. Lacking the slower pace of an earlier time which enabled our ancestors to sift, sample, test and either reject or absorb the vital ideas contributed by our most creative architects and critics, we too have been dashing on from one fashionable set of innovations to another leaving unexplored potentials along the way.

In our haste to be avant-garde, we tend to lose any useful continuity with the best of our own traditions, and thus we have no other effective way of building the cumulative sense of values needed for the grow- ing complexity of decisions confronting us. Instead, we try to acquire our values vicariously from those who do, we believe, have roots in their own set of traditions-the visiting critic. Like hothouse plants, our students are temporarily stimulated under con- trolled conditions by exotic fertilizer. If we are to shake off this kind of provincial educational inferior- ity we shall need to take the time, continuously, to re-examine our own physical and cultural environ- ment, our own historical roots, however modest they may be.

We face three major problems vis-a-vis historical values today, when values are no longer transmitted directly from one generation to another within our society: first, the difficulty of recognizing the tem- poral context (occasion) within which any set of architectural ideas have flourished in the past; sec- ond, the sifting from this earlier context whatever constituent principles that still have validity within the rapidly changing contemporary scene; third, the application of these principles, uninhibited by the transitory fashions of the day.

can society no longer afraid or ashamed of what Benjamin Polk has called "the rootedness of spirit."

The Present Need

Our recognition of the acceleration of technologi- cal and social change suggests that we in the schools of architecture place a new and somewhat different kind of emphasis upon historical studies-especially in America. Lacking the slower pace of an earlier time which enabled our ancestors to sift, sample, test and either reject or absorb the vital ideas contributed by our most creative architects and critics, we too have been dashing on from one fashionable set of innovations to another leaving unexplored potentials along the way.

In our haste to be avant-garde, we tend to lose any useful continuity with the best of our own traditions, and thus we have no other effective way of building the cumulative sense of values needed for the grow- ing complexity of decisions confronting us. Instead, we try to acquire our values vicariously from those who do, we believe, have roots in their own set of traditions-the visiting critic. Like hothouse plants, our students are temporarily stimulated under con- trolled conditions by exotic fertilizer. If we are to shake off this kind of provincial educational inferior- ity we shall need to take the time, continuously, to re-examine our own physical and cultural environ- ment, our own historical roots, however modest they may be.

We face three major problems vis-a-vis historical values today, when values are no longer transmitted directly from one generation to another within our society: first, the difficulty of recognizing the tem- poral context (occasion) within which any set of architectural ideas have flourished in the past; sec- ond, the sifting from this earlier context whatever constituent principles that still have validity within the rapidly changing contemporary scene; third, the application of these principles, uninhibited by the transitory fashions of the day.

Architecture-Art and Science Architecture-Art and Science

by Charles W. Moore, University of California by Charles W. Moore, University of California

Is architecture an art or a science? Every generation since the Renaissance, when the question first became meaningful, has had its answer-though owing to the changing meanings of the terms art and science, the same answers have not always meant the same thing. Our generation answers: Both. And Mr Moore, who is chairman of the Department of Architecture at Berkeley, is no exception. But his reasons as given at an ACSA fall conference are not the usual ones.

These remarks are addressed to consideration of architecture as an art and as a science because art and science have been represented for several gen-

Is architecture an art or a science? Every generation since the Renaissance, when the question first became meaningful, has had its answer-though owing to the changing meanings of the terms art and science, the same answers have not always meant the same thing. Our generation answers: Both. And Mr Moore, who is chairman of the Department of Architecture at Berkeley, is no exception. But his reasons as given at an ACSA fall conference are not the usual ones.

These remarks are addressed to consideration of architecture as an art and as a science because art and science have been represented for several gen-

erations as being at odds, and because I think an understanding of them depends on an illumination not of the differences between art and science but of their common purpose: to overcome chaos. Since the odds against the success of this joint enterprise are staggering, the two seek success by different routes. The scientist tries to marshal bits of informa- tion (bits of the chaos to which his intuition leads him) in sufficient quantity to detect a pattern of order, then works on, using his creative intuitions, his hunches, his point of view, to relate the patterns he has found to other patterns of order contained within them or within which they are contained.

erations as being at odds, and because I think an understanding of them depends on an illumination not of the differences between art and science but of their common purpose: to overcome chaos. Since the odds against the success of this joint enterprise are staggering, the two seek success by different routes. The scientist tries to marshal bits of informa- tion (bits of the chaos to which his intuition leads him) in sufficient quantity to detect a pattern of order, then works on, using his creative intuitions, his hunches, his point of view, to relate the patterns he has found to other patterns of order contained within them or within which they are contained.

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Journal of Architectural Education

Thus the frontier with chaos is pushed back, some- times along broad fronts.

The artist works on a smaller scale and strikes deeper into enemy territory-as frogmen do in the movies. His method is to simulate reality (which is mostly chaos) in a way which capsulates it, captures it and orders it, so that he has set up a substitute for reality which is under control or, as T. S. Eliot says, imposes "a credible order upon reality, to give a perception of an order in reality." This, you object, is magic, like dancing for rain, or sticking pins in dolls, or praying; but this is what the artist does, this is how he helps rout the forces of chaos. His powers and his techniques are those of the scientist: creative intuitions, hunches, the strength of a point of view, the triumph of unrelenting labor.

Architecture as Taking Possession . . .

Architecture, we have collectively decided, is a science and an art. This being the case, of what is it made? Within what limits does it operate? What are the bits that get organized by the architect-scientist, or have their organization simulated by the architect- artist? Is architecture sculpture you can get inside of? Or frozen music? Or the creation of shelter against the elements? Or the definition of spaces? It might more usefully be described as the making of places or, as Suzanne Langer styles it, the creation of an ethnic domain. We take possession, in our own names and in that of our society, of portions of the earth's surface and then, as architecture is an art-and insofar as it is an art-we subject that act of taking possession to some degree of abstrac- tion, in some of the same ways that a playwright ab- stracts events and human relationships in order that the abstraction might have some meaning beyond the events and relationships themselves. Birds, it is said, sing not for the joy of the morning nor for the beauty of the song but in order to establish possession of that area in which the sound of their voice can be heard, to set up, acoustically, a place and to establish that as the domain of themselves and their mates.

Man, in a variety of ways hopefully more subtle and complex, similarly takes possession of what he can, making a piece of the world his own as the playwright makes life his own. Indonesian dancers do it, within the space definable by the human body. Architecturally, one way to do this is to make a microcosm of the natural world, to make that world our own by arranging it to our own design. Some famous homes of Chinese poets, for example, are said to have been carefully sited in relation to a perfect piece of countryside, say a meadow perfectly round. Similarly, some famous homes of California architects take possession through their glass walls of a grove or a garden or a panorama.

... and as Abstraction

The microcosm of nature can be abstracted fur- ther, as in the famous sand gardens of Japan, like Ryoanji, which with fifteen rocks on a rectangle of sand the size of a tennis court are everything or nothing, as they seem to be the pattern of the uni- verse, or the sea with islands, or a river with rocks, or tiger cubs crossing a stream, or turtles, or just stones. In the same way, man abstracts shelter as first he makes tents which shield him from the ele- ments and then forever recalls those tents in pavil- ions, as in an Indian palace, in a walled enclosure where his old arrangements are recalled but con- trolled. Man also engages himself in the abstraction of the cosmic order, as shows up in the temples of southeast Asia like Angkor Wat, which develop from a center out of four axes past concentric rings of temple in an embodiment of that Mount Sumeru which stands in the middle of seven concentric seas separated by concentric mountain ranges and is the heartland of the Buddhist heaven. Or there is the order-less cosmic, more national-in Peking, where walls within walls like the peelable layers of an onion are cut through with a single axis which once made comprehensible and magnificently impressive the great national bureaucratic hierarchy. The archi- tects of Versailles similarly knew what they were doing when they ordered their great system of radial axes converging on the bedroom of the Sun King. And the Byzantine dome, too, at once abstracts and is the physical embodiment of the dome of heaven.

Our abstraction may be a simple marker or a piece of the field marked off from the rest like a piazza in the Mediterranean countries, sharing the out-of-doors and a part of them, not like a cave, yet carefully distinguished from the relatively undevel- oped fields of which man has not taken possession in just the same way, so that the piazza becomes the special place where the activities of a human society might happen, where minds might meet in an environment under human control.

It would seem that this concern with taking pos- session, and with abstracting this act of taking pos- session, is a broad enough one to be fairly simple and readily capable of consummation; yet we our- selves make an incredible mess when we put to- gether buildings and architects enough to make a campus or a world's fair or a demonstration piece of urban renewal: inevitably, almost, the buildings demonstrate no basis for taking possession, no co- herent direction, no point of view, no anything that makes the whole more than a jangling sum of dispar- ate parts.

And the land, the only land we have to make a place on, to take possession of, is quickly being sub-

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merged under the endless thoughtless gray suburbs, the Haywards and the San Joses and the Orange Counties and the Phoenixes. We seem uncertain, as we take possession and perhaps as we abstract this act, who is taking possession and what this posses- sion consists of. The problem is that the artist, like the scientist, is a combatant in the war against chaos, and his presence is required somewhere near the front lines. In the years after the first blush of the Italian Renaissance, architects like Palladio designed churches with central plans and places with harmonic number systems of dimensioning in an endeavor to resonate with the harmony of the spheres, the better to serve the most important ends they knew of. In this endeavor these architects were close to the aspi- rations of great men in other fields: mathematicians and divines.

All this is submitted in opposition to the notion that architecture taken as an art instead of a science is distinguished by the one being pretty and the other being plain, by the one being "fun" while the other is hard work, by the one being loose while the other is tight, by the one being cultural while the other is technical; and it is certainly in opposition to the supposition that architecture the art has some- thing to do with taste, while architecture the science deals in facts. Art is not art, I would submit, unless it is acting on the frontiers of knowledge or past those frontiers, out in the realm of chaos, where it can work its magic and simulate order (and remem- ber, simulating order does not necessarily mean lining everything up, like redcoats in the face of the Indians). This seems to indicate that before we look to produce art or artists, we should try to find out where the frontiers of knowledge are.

Problems or Puzzles? In the schools this suggests a series of reforms.

Sim Van der Ryn, of the Berkeley faculty, makes the distinction between a problem and a puzzle. Most so-called architectural "problems," he points out, are really puzzles: someone gives you the pieces (eg, 500 sq ft for the cloak room) and you figure out a way to put them together. In a real problem you have to figure out what the pieces are; this in- volves knowing something. As in science or in art, you must assemble, generally, bits of information so numerous that only a developed point of view, a creative-intuitive capacity will suffice to give you di- rection. The form-giving is then seen to be only a small part of a process which starts with the dis- covery of pieces somewhere out on the edge of chaos which can work together into the puzzle and ends with the kind of careful evaluation of the product which would seem to be an absolute requirement of any design process organized to the point of be- ing transmittable, but is almost nonexistent in archi- tecture, either in practice or in the schools.

Even so, the problem in an architectural school is more difficult than just identifying, examining, manipulating and testing the pieces, important as they are, which limit and shape our architecture, granting that they must be understood far better than we understand them yet, that the problems

must be much more clearly defined than we have defined them yet if our architecture is to be really responsive and the architect really responsible. Un- done as this first task is, the source of further diffi- culty, of course, is that an architectural problem is not ordinarily like the solution to a set of simultane- ous equations, automatically solved by getting the pieces in the proper relation and then letting the system roll. Those of us who have ever been any- where near Louis Kahn, and many who haven't, are fond of talking about letting a building be "what it wants to be." The building, of course, doesn't "want to be" anything. The architect wants it to be some- thing and the phrase is there to serve as a reminder, really, that it is the architect as responsible agent of our society and not the architect as unattached "artist" whose wants are of any interest or impor- tance.

The crux of the architect's problem and the school of architecture's problem is that the separate determi- nants of architecture, crucial as it is to recognize them, do not always, or even often, add up to de- termine one inevitable answer, but conflict; and it is up to someone-the architect-to establish em- phases, priorities, hierarchies to make an intelligent determination of what overrides what. Here's where the existence of a point of view becomes important and it is here that the architect functions not only as a calculator, but as a responsible agent of society, the inheritor of what it has, has been and is. Here is, of course, the whole point of having a school of architecture in the university-for a set of values for whose establishment the university can set the stage and for an understanding of the society, as well as for the imputation of moral significance which will enlist the attention of intelligent people as no set of techniques devoid of this significance can do. From a real education then, in a university, we might hope it would come about that the point of view that marshals these disparate pieces that we've been talking about into order, and from that into art, would be more than a naive and thought- less personal one but would belong to the architect as the knowing, thoughtful, responsible agent of society.

The Curriculum: Pieces and Point of View How do we do this? How do we organize an

orderly introduction of the discoverable pieces of knowledge and techniques and make in the curricu- lum a chance to test and develop these pieces of knowledge and techniques without giving the spuri- ous impression that these are discrete and unrelated manifestations? How do we, that is, provide the pieces, the facts and techniques, at the same time the student is developing the capacity and the point of view to order them, illuminated by the realization that the pieces are not all there yet and the product won't have a chance really to be architecture until they are? We would not admire a medical school where people in their first year operated on others in order that they might get the feel of it; where they, upon learning, say something about veins, would disguise themselves as doctors and go about

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Journal of Architectural Education Journal of Architectural Education

pulling out and fixing peoples' vascular systems with minimum regard for the attachments of these sys- tems. Similarly, it may well be that playing architect from an early point in the curriculum has no real place as part of the school process. Perhaps a use- ful comparison would be the development of oriental calligraphers. In Japan and China the way a poem looks-the way the brush strokes combine, the qual- ity of the space between the brush strokes and the quality of the strokes themselves, and the artist's respect for the medium, brush and ink, which make the characters of the short poem, are as important as what the poem is talking about. In the training of the calligrapher, then, I expect, it must be that at the same time that the skills are being developed to make possible the visible presentation of a poem so the thought processes are being developed in order that the poem might have something to say. Some- thing like this-some process of figuring out how to do the increasingly complex things that we need to do requiring more and more technical skill and capacity, with the development of the knowledge of what to do with these skills and why to do them, as in the making of the Oriental poem, is certainly going to be required with much more rigorous standards than we have yet dared apply. So perhaps we could help return some sense to this process of taking possession of a place (a process that so often now seems so complicated and so pointless), figur-

pulling out and fixing peoples' vascular systems with minimum regard for the attachments of these sys- tems. Similarly, it may well be that playing architect from an early point in the curriculum has no real place as part of the school process. Perhaps a use- ful comparison would be the development of oriental calligraphers. In Japan and China the way a poem looks-the way the brush strokes combine, the qual- ity of the space between the brush strokes and the quality of the strokes themselves, and the artist's respect for the medium, brush and ink, which make the characters of the short poem, are as important as what the poem is talking about. In the training of the calligrapher, then, I expect, it must be that at the same time that the skills are being developed to make possible the visible presentation of a poem so the thought processes are being developed in order that the poem might have something to say. Some- thing like this-some process of figuring out how to do the increasingly complex things that we need to do requiring more and more technical skill and capacity, with the development of the knowledge of what to do with these skills and why to do them, as in the making of the Oriental poem, is certainly going to be required with much more rigorous standards than we have yet dared apply. So perhaps we could help return some sense to this process of taking possession of a place (a process that so often now seems so complicated and so pointless), figur-

ing out who is doing this and in whose name (the people's, the property owner's, the developer's, the tax collector's, the government's?) and what it is that needs to be done quite precisely and specifically, as well as in the clearest and simplest general terms.

We ask, then, how to do this. I don't know and I don't know of anyone who does. But I think with our increasing attention to the clarity and precision of the knowable pieces, and with an unrelenting con- cern to make students responsible, faculty responsi- ble and the profession far more responsible than it is now to the needs of the whole society, we are on the way. I think that we can do it by finding out how to develop the pieces of an architectural education, then how to introduce them into a curriculum and how to make it very clear that these pieces are only pieces subservient to the developed point of view of the educated agent of the society: the architect. I think that if we can start from the knowable and maintain a responsible humility, we may yet be in a position to create not just the rare architectural gem in the worsening mess but to make an environment on earth as responsible, as rigorously judgable, as exacting and as exciting as the efforts that are about to take us to the moon and beyond. If architecture as a science is out on the frontier of chaos with the rest of science, then I think we can expect that architecture as an art will be out beyond that, where it will have to make some potent magic to survive.

ing out who is doing this and in whose name (the people's, the property owner's, the developer's, the tax collector's, the government's?) and what it is that needs to be done quite precisely and specifically, as well as in the clearest and simplest general terms.

We ask, then, how to do this. I don't know and I don't know of anyone who does. But I think with our increasing attention to the clarity and precision of the knowable pieces, and with an unrelenting con- cern to make students responsible, faculty responsi- ble and the profession far more responsible than it is now to the needs of the whole society, we are on the way. I think that we can do it by finding out how to develop the pieces of an architectural education, then how to introduce them into a curriculum and how to make it very clear that these pieces are only pieces subservient to the developed point of view of the educated agent of the society: the architect. I think that if we can start from the knowable and maintain a responsible humility, we may yet be in a position to create not just the rare architectural gem in the worsening mess but to make an environment on earth as responsible, as rigorously judgable, as exacting and as exciting as the efforts that are about to take us to the moon and beyond. If architecture as a science is out on the frontier of chaos with the rest of science, then I think we can expect that architecture as an art will be out beyond that, where it will have to make some potent magic to survive.

Considering Architecture? Considering Architecture?

by Olindo Grossi, Pratt Institute by Olindo Grossi, Pratt Institute

Architecture is so special a calling that even to enter a school of architecture as a freshman student is a big step-and a step which, if taken inadvisedly, can lead to the waste of more time than either the stu- dent or his instructors can well spare. How to reduce to a minimum the number of students who take the step inadvisedly is a problem confronting every school. Here Dean Grossi describes a program de- signed to that end which has been in successful oper- ation at Pratt Institute for the past fourteen years.

How can architects and architectural schools reach high school seniors who are vaguely interested in studying architecture? This question has concerned professionals for many years. Some lecture and ad- vise at career days held by high schools. A nearby chapter runs a design problem for six weeks in local

Architecture is so special a calling that even to enter a school of architecture as a freshman student is a big step-and a step which, if taken inadvisedly, can lead to the waste of more time than either the stu- dent or his instructors can well spare. How to reduce to a minimum the number of students who take the step inadvisedly is a problem confronting every school. Here Dean Grossi describes a program de- signed to that end which has been in successful oper- ation at Pratt Institute for the past fourteen years.

How can architects and architectural schools reach high school seniors who are vaguely interested in studying architecture? This question has concerned professionals for many years. Some lecture and ad- vise at career days held by high schools. A nearby chapter runs a design problem for six weeks in local

high schools, and a chapter in the Midwest is plan- ning similar activities next year.

For the student, direct contact with professionals is imperative. Only through confrontation with the professional is he able to separate romantic notions from a more realistic appraisal. Without it, all he can do is talk it over with his guidance counselors and parents.

Architecture remains an unknown-one option among many professions-which the high school student may decide to pursue, and this is a precari- ous circumstance for young people about to make a lifetime decision. At Pratt, accordingly, we have tried to correct the situation by conducting what is known as High School Competition Day-a pro- gram which we have been told helps serve this need.

The name itself is correct in that prizes are

high schools, and a chapter in the Midwest is plan- ning similar activities next year.

For the student, direct contact with professionals is imperative. Only through confrontation with the professional is he able to separate romantic notions from a more realistic appraisal. Without it, all he can do is talk it over with his guidance counselors and parents.

Architecture remains an unknown-one option among many professions-which the high school student may decide to pursue, and this is a precari- ous circumstance for young people about to make a lifetime decision. At Pratt, accordingly, we have tried to correct the situation by conducting what is known as High School Competition Day-a pro- gram which we have been told helps serve this need.

The name itself is correct in that prizes are

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